Free The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith Page A

throat. “Well, no, dumbass. The cat only stayed with us a few months, anyway.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?” Cobie Petersen asked.
    â€œWell, our house is out on the old South Fork Route,” Max began.
    Naturally, a kid like Cobie Petersen would know the road, since it was the only link between Sunday and Dumpling Run, which is where Cobie Petersen lived.
    Max said, “The cat was always trying to kill himself. Seriously. I know that sounds unnatural, but he would wait in the grass on the side of the road, just like a normal cat waits and watches for birds. Only Alex was waiting and watching for cars or trucks to speed by, then he’d try to run out and throw himself into their wheels. At first, my mom just thought it was because the cat was young and inexperienced with cars and stuff. But after enough times grabbing him by the tail at the last second, the coincidence started to kind of wear off.
    â€œSo, one day, my mom was taking a load of garbage out to the incinerator and the cat made a try at it again, just as an old Plymouth came barreling down the highway.”
    Cobie and Larry, caught up in Max’s story, leaned closer to my brother.
    â€œMy mom had to drop the garbage and make a dive for the cat. But the cat got loose, and my mom broke her wrist on the blacktop.”
    â€œWas she okay?” Cobie Petersen asked.
    Max shook his head and shrugged. “Who knows? Her arm was broken—anyone could see that—and she got a tooth knocked out, too, but she said she’d be fine, and she refused to let anyone take her in to see the doctor.”
    That’s our mom!
    â€œWow. Your mom’s fucking tough,” Cobie said.
    Max shrugged again and said, “Yeah. Whatever. Who knows? The thing is, though, when the cat met the Plymouth in the middle of the road, the thing exploded. Blew up.
Kablooey
. Done. It made a five-foot-deep crater in South Fork Route, and the road was shut down for almost two weeks.”
    â€œI remember that,” Cobie Petersen said.
    â€œYeah. Well, it was our cat, Alex, the biodrone, that did it.” Max said, “The official explanation said that the boys in the Plymouth were carrying barrels of high-octane moonshine, and that’s what caused the explosion. But it was actually our cat, which wasn’t much of a cat at all.”
    â€œThat’s kind of creepy,” Larry said.
    â€œYeah. So next time you see a basket of free kittens in a Walmart parking lot, or even if you happen to notice a blue jay swooping down from the branches on a nice summer day, you can just stop and think about whether what you assume you’re looking at is really something that happens to be looking at you; something that’s worse than anything you could ever imagine,” Max said.
    Then Max did something that surprised and embarrassed me. He tapped my knee with the back of his hand—almost affectionately, the way that conspiratorial brothers might do when they’re pulling one over on someone—and said, “Isn’t that right, Ariel?”
    What could I say?
    I nodded.
    And I thought, maybe in some new language, Max and I would become
we
.

TEACHER’S PET AND THE DUMPLING MAN
    â€œ Is that for real? ” Larry said.
    Max frowned disapprovingly. “Dude. Larry. How long have you been working here at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys? You must have heard about some of the fucked-up things Merrie-Seymour and Alex Division do to people.”
    Larry stared off into the dark. I don’t think he actually knew anything about the camp’s owners. I was also pretty sure Larry drank an awful lot.
    â€œYou’ve been to this camp before?”
    â€œYes,” Max said, “when I was thirteen. For fat camp.”
    â€œIt looks like it worked out pretty good for you. What are you? Like a buck-ten, if that?” Larry said.
    Max exhaled through his nose. “Look, I have
never
been fat. My parents just wanted